more snapshots from the Annandale Way

'Whiter than White' - a new story in book form

First offspring of 'Best Foot Books', this small book, perfectly formed to fit a pocket, contains a long short story inspired by my walks on the Isle of Rum. The Edwardian history of Kinloch Castle and the servants' walk across the island between castle and laundry form the backdrop. (See previous posts). Available from a number of appropriate outlets including The Aberfeldy Watermill, the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, The Land, Sea and Island Centre and Cafe Rhu in Arisaig; the Mallaig Bookshop, Mallaig Heritage Centre ; Kinloch Castle on Rum. It can also be ordered direct from my website for £4 inc p&p.

It’s 1913, and as the stags’ roaring fades in the hills, the household at Kinloch Castle is packing up to return to Accrington at the end of another season. Jimmy will walk over the hill only seven more times to deliver the laundry to the maids Emma and Lily at Kilmory. Then he will return to his home on the Isle of Eigg. In those last brief visits, will he manage to both ensure his future with the departing Emma, and to contain their secret?

The Annandale Way

What links Romans and motorway engineers; opium and cattle-reiving; cheese and sandstone; saints and hunting dogs; wind-bleached uplands and mud-sea shores; the salmon and the Solway; Burns and Scott?

Last week I walked the Annandale Way and found all these links and more. Running between the headwaters of the Annan river at the Devil's Beef Tub north of Moffat, and Barnkirk Point on the Solway, just south of Annan, this 54 mile walk surprises almost because much of the landscape is so unassuming. As I stepped across the veins of the river catchment, stories unfolded of the travel of ice and water; after which came feet, hooves the lines of wheels, rail and road. From reedy upland to pastoral lowland, the river gushes and then meanders through friesian-bright meadows. It finally slows, tide-tugged and moon-torn, to mingle with the Solway Waters amongst desolate smears of mud and sky, horizons haunted by curlew call and a demolished lighthouse, described by Burns as 'this wild place of the world'.

I found flashes of kingfisher, crumbling mansions, the blink of a hare. Oak trees twisted through centuries of growth and willows sprung quickly from the earth to harvest for the bio-mass station which pumps smoke into the air near Lockerbie.

Rivers are mysterious, and they demand us to think in holistic ways. What befalls the land leaches its effects into rivers and thence the sea. Rivers endlessly cycle through millenia, from hill to shore and back, witnessing our history, shifting in their course or level, perhaps commenting if we allow them to. Sometimes I walked slower than the river and sometimes faster. But I was always going in the same direction, warned by the river of its powers, 'Walk against me if you will, but I'll sweep you down again in your sleep when you can't resist, so you have to start again.'

How to be an anthologist

‘Editing anthologies is an unsung art. An anthologist balances story selection, story editing, story arrangement, and central concept ...'

This quote comes from an article, Anthologists Discuss their Craft in Clarkesworld magazine. OK, their territory as 'six of the most accomplished and innovative editors working in the fantasy, science fiction and horror fields', is a little different to my own, but the principles seem similar. Anyone considering taking on the editing of an anthology might do well to read this fascinating discussion which Philippa Johnson of Literaturetraining, in her role as professional development adviser, alerted me to.

As I read all the words Two Ravens Press have called in from writers of 'wild places', a fascinating process begins to unfold. The selection is a curious and complex task, and a great responsibility. It's not just about selecting for the quality of writing, but for the diversity of what is said in relation to the theme, the way it is said, the places that are evoked. I go for a walk in the tug and sun-splash of this April day, afraid that all the words will gust out of my head. Instead, the individual pieces start to jostle against each other, talk to each other, set up chimes and frictions, and I return to my task excited. I begin to see how a gathering of 'stories' could muster to become more than the sum of its parts in A Wilder Vein.

wayside interpretation

Here's a great idea. Last week I walked a stretch of disused railway line, now a path, between Haddington and Longniddry in East Lothian. Along the way were these panels, with some helpful and fun suggestions for what to see provided by Longniddry Primary School.

From late April I'm going to be walking and writing along a new long-distance footpath in Dumfriesshire, the Annandale Way, which follows the Annan river from source to mouth for 52 miles between Moffat and Annan. I'll be working with five schools along the way to write some wayside interpretation and accompanying literature for paper. So the Haddington example was good to see.

The Annandale Way is new territory for me but already I know that it will pass through some fascinating story territory - reivers, the site of the discovery of an ancient bow, medieval land-use systems and even Merlin is said to be buried in a hill near Moffat. Atlantic salmon run the river and there's a famously tragic Burns song about Annan waters. We will have plenty to set our pens walking.

The path opens on September 12th.

John Muir Trust and wild writing

Last Wednesday myself and co-judge Hamish MacDonald announced the winners of the John Muir Trust's wild writing competition at Fort William's fantastic Mountain Festival. It's the third year I've been involved in some capacity and the way that JMT has joined the Festival in developing a creative response to mountains and wild places in our lives has been fantastic and creates more and more interest each year.

For the full results, see here but Tom Bryan of Kelso was the overall winner with a beautiful reflection on his relationship with Suilven, the iconic Assynt mountain that follows one's eye, shape-shifting as it goes, around that part of north-west Scotland. Alan Gay of North Berwick took second place with a mysterious poem called 'Deer Path' which for me made the visible and invisible worlds of the mountains touch for a moment. There were three runners up - all prose pieces - from Kate Blackadder, Stephen Busby and Jenny Holden.

Joyce Carol Oates criticised 'nature writing' for what she called its "painfully limited set of responses: reverence, awe, piety, mystical oneness." We may have found those responses amongst the entries but we also found exhilaration, confusion, boredom, coldness, joy and grief.

Congratulations to all!

Meanwhile, if you get hold of a copy of the latest JMT journal (46/Spring 2009) you will find an illustrated extract of my piece 'The Beat of Heart Stones' about a walk along a dry stone dyke on Schiehallion this time last year.

The persistence of feet and water

The train from Nairobi to Mombasa travels to its own timetable, its hours unpredictable. When children in the nearby villages and homesteads hear it, they come running across the fields towards it, specks at first, full pelt with shoulders leading, until they stop with wide grins for the daily spectacle. Whistles, shrieks, waves greet us. The embankments are trailed with paths. The beat of feet have found the most direct way down, identifying the line and then reinforcing it over and over, up and down, wearing it smooth, stone free, curving. The feet have worked with natural features - soft or hard rock, contours, just as a stream would.

In Hell's Gate National Park, close to Lake Naivasha, I was told a story which combines feet and water in the formation of a deep gorge . The Maasai used to herd their cattle between the high plateau and Lake Naivasha. The route they wore attracted running water in the rainy season, which worked with the pathway over the years to gouge a deep indentation in the land. The herders continued to use the route, fairly dry except during the rains, and the gorge deepened to its dramatic formation today. Whether or not this geography is accurate, I like the story of cooperation between human and animal movement and the aggressive momentum of water.

In the gorge, the Maasai found boiling water spouting and falling, they thought of it as someone below them, cooking. They were then convinced this ravine led to Hell.

The Maasai and their animals are now settled there, no longer nomadic. But the tracks of wilder animals persist, overlaying each other on the same routes, ways that converge into the only water hole, to lay out a massive spider of paths.

Yesterday I walked across the valley near my home. The valley bottom is now a golf course but it had previously been common-land and people walk their dogs or themselves there as if it still is. By and large walkers and golfers cooperate. Over the years the greenkeepers have made efforts to re-direct feet by closing gaps in walls where short cuts emerge onto roads or other pathways. Yesterday I noticed that one of the former ways has re-asserted itself over the non-golfing winter - a thin line has been worn in the grass leading to a small but determined tumbling of the wall.